CLEVELAND, Tenn. — The board of Cleveland City Schools will consider an estimated $71,500 in air conditioning maintenance needs in March.
On Wednesday, the board’s site committee recommended the full board consider hardware replacements and software upgrades that control air conditioning systems at Cleveland High School and several elementary schools.
“It’s kind of one of the unglamorous things we do,” board member Dawn Robinson said. “Until they [teachers and students] are in a hot building.”
A priority concern will be replacing a control panel and safety monitor for the centrifugal chiller unit that cools the entire east wing of the high school, said Hal Taylor, director of maintenance and transportation for the school system.
The $31,000 panel is specially built by the manufacturer and will take about six to eight weeks for construction, delivery and installation, he said.
The choice, Taylor said, was ordering the replacement panel in time to replace it in mid-summer when the school is empty or reacting to a control panel failure and having to wait up to two months for replacement.
The new panel also could tie into the system’s energy management programming and more efficiently use the high school air conditioning system, he said.
“It’s better to be prepared,” said board member Peggy Pesterfield.
Taylor said Blythe-Bower Elementary needs a $9,500 software fix to the communication gateways between its energy management program and its air conditioning system.
The school’s air conditioning works, but there is no way to change the energy management programming to improve heating and cooling efficiency, he said.
Taylor said the communication system is old and has been patched with piecemeal technical service fixes over a 15-year period. Ultimately, Blythe-Bower and four other elementary schools ill need upgrades to energy management programming, officials said.
One choice is a web-based program estimated to cost $31,000, energy management consultant Paul Ramsey said.
Board members talked about how to pay for any upgrades that are approved.
Cleveland Schools’ maintenance fund, which receives allocations from a 2009 city sales tax increase, is at about $155,000, said schools business manager Brenda Carson.
That fund probably will grow by the time the projects take place in the summer, she said.
Some board members also said the upgrades could be paid for out of the general fund if necessary.
Paul Leach is based in Cleveland. Email him at paul.leach.press@gmail.com.